Leading With Heart and Skill

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
—John Quincy Adams

Dear Leaders,

For those of you that followed the Women’s World Cup games (soccer to some, football to others), you witnessed, as expected, that the players played with heart and skill.

Heart and skill helped the U.S. team make it to the finals, but they also had another element on their side, Coach and Leader, Pia Sundhage.

Coach Sundhage credits advancing to the finals a result of the teams ability to deal with adversity. The players on the other hand attribute a good portion of their success to their coach’s ultra-positive outlook.

Coach Sundhage is frequently heard saying: “My glass is half full”; “I coach what is healthy”; “if you have positive expectations, it very often happens”, and a favorite motivator “Excellent!”

Player Heather O’Reilly says Sundhage “is the most positive coach I have ever had,” and another player, Julie Foudy says “she’s always positive, her glass is always full and that helps to stabilize the team in moments of crisis and adversity”.

Sundhage has a calming influence, is an extreme optimist, and readily sings a song to help her team combat stress. She even sang “Feelin’ Groovy” during a news conference!

Included in her leadership strategy is reviewing videos of previous goals, and highlights from past games.  She uses these to provide feedback and build confidence by reinforcing successes.

Sundhage says: “That feedback, I hope, will make them stronger, gain some confidence, and I’m also telling them, ‘This is good, do it again’.  She concludes by saying “It’s fun for me to coach like that.”

In addition to playing with heart and skill, the U.S. team played with class. After losing the title to Japan, (many say because of missed opportunities), U.S. Goalie Hope Solo summed it up by saying. “The Japanese showed a lot of passion and a lot of fight. I don’t say that about many teams but I have an awful lot of respect for them. They played for a lot more than sport. They played for so many good and wonderful reasons.”

They all deserve being credited for playing and leading with heart, skill, and class.

PeopleTek Coaching Announcement

Having the courage to document your goals is step 2 from our book 12 Steps For Courageous Leadership!

Do you struggle with putting your goals on paper? Do you encourage others to put their goals in writing?

If yes, we want to hear how easy or difficult it was for you, and then the success stories for achieving that written goal.

Step 2: The Courage To Document Your Goals

  • Have written goals moved you along?
  • How has your team or organization benefited?

For those of you with direct reports, does your staff understand how they personally contribute to team goals?

Do you help them document their supporting goals and regularly review the progress against them?

Does everyone understand the impact to the customer or client if they goal is NOT met? And more positively, how have relationships, job satisfaction levels, and the bottom line grown when the goals ARE met?

We look forward to hearing your success stories and the benefits derived from having documented (and shared) goals!

Mid Year Check-In

Leaders must know where they are going if they expect others to willingly join them on the journey.
–Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Reviewing Your Goals

Can you believe we’re halfway through the year? They say as we get older time goes more quickly and we’re beginning to believe that!

It’s that time again; we’re half-way through the year and we need to take a checkpoint on our year to date successes, identify our struggles and what we’re losing sleep over, and prioritize our desired year-end results.

Hopefully, you’ve been reviewing your goals and development plan regularly. Have you missed or neglected any of them? Don’t let urgent issues derail you from “actioning” important issues.

While reviewing your goals do a mental check-in to determine if all of your behaviors are supporting the attainment of your goals. PeopleTek’s formula for success is VMGM=B  (Vision, Mission, Goals, Measures = Behaviors). Behaviors are the key to success!

While reviewing your goals validate that:

  • Achieved goals have been recognized and celebrated
  • Your organization has a talent retention plan
  • Leadership bench-strength exists
  • You are keeping abreast of changing times by developing and updating skill-sets (yours and others!)
  • Relationship enhancements have occurred as needed
  • Team members are intent on becoming more courageous leaders

How to Involve Your Team in Achieving Goals

  1. Conduct a review of how your organization is doing, and meet with direct reports to assess progress (or lack of). This includes having a formal one on one with each team member to review their goal accomplishments and update individual development plans. Address what training is necessary for individual career advancement, and what is required to create organizational bench strength.
  2. Provide feedback about how each employee can better help the company achieve its goals, and ensure all behaviors are aligned with realizing positive momentum.
  3. Make your one on one meetings a true dialogue; ask for opinions and advice for growth and how to attain goals. Discuss ideas for cost savings and waste elimination. Ask what they feel is working well, and why. Ask what is not working well, or what is impacting results and growth.

“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”
–John QuincyAdams

Tips to Stay on Track With Your Goals

As a reminder, IMPORTANT issues contribute heavily to our goals and objectives and have high value. URGENT issues require immediate attention but may or may not contribute to the success of meeting our goals and objectives. Here are some tips to help you stay on track with goals during the second half of the year and beyond.

  • Invest the time to assess what’s important; you will almost always have sufficient time for these.
  • Start your day with the important tasks instead of the “fast, enjoyable and easy to accomplish” ones.
  • Distinguish between urgent and important; help your team and organization understand this and engage other leaders if in doubt.  (Or help them understand the difference!)
  • Don’t let the priorities of others replace your own top priorities; learn to say no firmly and tactfully.
  • Recognize that readiness levels and skill-sets may need to be developed and honed.
  • Be willing to invest the time and resources that will enable you to be a highly successful leader and have a high performing team.

Don’t wait! Now is the time to set realistic expectations for what you wish to accomplish in the second half of the year. Wishing you success!

Commitment For Excellence

What does the word commitment mean to you? Reliable, trustworthy, dedicated, loyal, devoted, obligated, and responsible are some of the words that may come to mind.

Now think of “excellence.” Perhaps you think of superior, perfect, brilliant, distinct, and quality.

What about when you combine the two words: Commitment and Excellence? They’re pretty powerful words and before we can make them work for us we need to understand what we’re committed to, and then put a plan of excellence into place.

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
–Vince Lombardi

We regularly talk about the need for having written vision, mission, and goals in order to achieve success.  In addition we need to consider how we can provide exceptional value to our customers, shareholders, and business partners (ex. optimal service or quality products and deliverables).

Are you part of an organization that is committed to excellence? Assuming yes, how would you rate the work that is performed or the product or service that you deliver?  Do you take the time to review those results and take note of what has been done well (so it can be repeated) and identify any gaps (so they can be improved upon)?

What about you personally? Do you have short and long term goals? Are you as committed to excellence at home as you are at work?  Could your life improve and perhaps your levels of happiness and satisfaction grow if you took the time to assess what worked well and what caused friction?

We can all benefit by identifying the areas we excel in and understanding the reasons we excel, as well as knowing what causes resistance.  Having a commitment for excellence and allowing it to become a habit will serve us well!